Title:

Lost in Translation: Collaborating with Community Partners

Description:

Academics are increasingly collaborating with indigenous peoples and other community-based groups to produce narratives that depict local or indigenous knowledges, but also to show communities' experiences of economic, political, and environmental marginalization. But what the research process usually involves is a difficult and problematic translation from these communities' oral traditions (sometimes in languages other than English) to the academic text. For decades ethnographers and feminist scholars have agonized over "speaking for" communities—while indigenous scholars have also argued that "research" itself not only reproduces colonial power relations, but often maligns the meanings of traditional or indigenous knowledges. So in addition to methodological concerns, this paper session asks how the act of translating poses problems with inherently epistemological and ontological dimensions. "Translation" here thus refers to the translation of languages, but also the translation between narrative forms, from oral to written. What kinds of knowledges might be lost in these translations? Why does the "context" of stories matter? What kinds of textual forms or academic presentations can better accommodate the knowledges that oral traditions convey? How can communities ever review the veracity of academics' written interpretations? Are there better ways to decolonize geographic representation, when geography as a discipline has been so dependant on the textual form?

Anticipated Attendance:

25

Organizers:

Chairs:

Participants:

Sponsorships:

Indigenous Peoples Specialty Group